Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 intensified Sweden’s focus on national defense, making food preparedness a central policy concern. In Swedish policy debates, food preparedness is often framed as a matter of security and associated with short-term crises. In contrast, sustainability-oriented perspectives present food preparedness as part of a longer-term transformation of the food system. This reveals a central tension in how food preparedness is understood by various actors and highlights the different ways sustainability is understood in relation to it. Clarifying what this tension entails is crucial for a meaningful public and academic debate on food preparedness and can provide further insight into the relationship between food preparedness and sustainability goals.

Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to explore how food preparedness is given meaning in Swedish policymaking, with particular attention to its connection to sustainability. To do so, I analyze how food preparedness is understood in Swedish consultation responses to the government inquiry Livsmedelsberedskap för en ny tid. Drawing on Bacchi’s What’s the Problem Represented to Be (WPR) approach, the study examines how food preparedness is understood, the assumptions underlying these understandings, and the effects they produce in relation to sustainability.

The empirical material consists of 14 consultation responses from a selection of actors, ranging from government agencies to interest organizations. In a policy context where national directives are limited and responsibilities are vague, these responses are a valuable site for exploring how food preparedness is given meaning.

The findings show that food preparedness is more than a question of food supply. It is a question of governance, economic viability, national security, household responsibility, and environmental change, all at once. Furthermore, the conflicting perspectives on sustainability lead to diverse opinions on whether the existing food system should be maintained or transformed. One of my most important findings is that the organisations in the consultation responses more often want to stabilize and improve the existing food system than to challenge it fundamentally. Although some actors, both within the research field and in the consultation responses, call for bigger ecological change, these perspectives remain limited compared with the dominant emphasis on production, coordination, and resilience within current structures.

As such, my study suggests that food preparedness is no technical fix but a deeply political issue. It is an issue that continues to reflect not only concerns about shortages but also wider struggles over resilience, responsibility, and future generations’ access to food, where sustainability is interpreted in several incompatible ways.